Organizer(s)/Sponsor(s): UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Description:

How does attention to the intimate help us understand the gendered and sexualized dynamics of empire and the ways in which they continue to shape how we tell our stories in the present? Empire’s Mistress pieces together the life story of Isabel Rosario Cooper, a mixed-race vaudeville and early cinema star in Manila who became infamous for her liaison with General Douglas MacArthur during the height of American colonialism in the Philippines. It tracks the mobilities and relationships generated by the United States’ desire for the Philippine archipelago—and the ways in which colonized subjects—particularly women—turned those to their own advantage. The scattered and ephemeral archive of “women like her” whose cosmopolitan itineraries ranged from Manila to Washington, D.C., and Hollywood, outline a life lived on the edges of power but always at the center of imperial desire. 

Vernadette Gonzalez is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Her areas of research include studies of tourism and militarism, transnational cultural studies, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies with a focus on Asia and the Pacific. She has a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. Her most recent book, Empire’s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper (Duke 2021) is an exploration of the intimacies of imperial geopolitics through the life story of a mixed-race vaudeville and film actress and sometime mistress of General Douglas MacArthur. 

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